Nucleic Acid Vaccine

Dear Colleagues,

As the world struggles with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA-based vaccines presented a ray of hope to end this pandemic. The swift development and FDA approval of the RNA-based COVID-19 vaccines reignited the interest in nucleic acid-based vaccine development. Indeed, pandemic pathogens warrant the need for an effective vaccine platform with a potential for rapid turnover to roll out millions of vaccine doses. Nucleic acid vaccines have emerged as a next-generation vaccine platform over the conventional vaccines, such as live attenuated, inactivated and subunit vaccines. The nucleic acid vaccine exploits the central dogma of molecular biology, delivering either DNA or RNA with a genetic message to encode the target immunogen. In this Special Issue, entitled “Nucleic acid vaccines,” a collection of research articles focused on the recent scientific and technical progress made in the field of DNA/RNA vaccines will be presented. Nucleic acid vaccine research, targeting not only the emerging and pandemic pathogens, but also the tropical infectious diseases, will be included under this Special Issue. Most of the viral genomes are either RNA or DNA, encoding the viral proteins. Nucleic acid vaccines mimic natural infection, especially viral infection and, hence, have the ability to elicit both the adaptive and innate immune responses. Moreover, unlike protein-based subunit vaccines, nucleic acid vaccine encoding endogenous antigens are presented by MHC class I, facilitating cellular immune response.

We invite authors to share their research on nucleic acid vaccine development with respect to critical aspects not limited to i) design of vaccine with a potential to effectively respond and protect against pandemic pathogens such as COVID-19; ii) safe and effective vaccine delivery technologies; iii) strategies for cost-effective production and storage stability; iv) unique mechanistic insights into vaccine response, efficacy and long-term protection.  

Dr. Sofia Casares
Dr. Himanshu Batra
Dr. Swati Jain
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• DNA Vaccine
• RNA Vaccine
• vaccine delivery
• immune responses
• pandemic